Practitioners own discomfort and/or lack of confidence
“I would know how to refer and I could suggest things but I’m definitely not confident.”
“I think it’s a bit of discomfort.”“I don’t feel skilled to go down that route and ask those kinds
of questions really.”
“You’d want to feel confident that you were doing the right
things and saying the right things and dealing with it in
the right way.”
Worries about parent response
“I wouldn’t want the shutters to come up and for them to be ‘I’m not having anything to do
with that.’”
“Separated families…it’s a minefield…like you’ve got to be
really careful. I find it really hard.”
“I feel like they would be standoffish and back off.”
“Being able to get that information from a parent
without them being offended… I do feel at the
minute if I was to start asking questions…it’s more about
MY confidence, not because I think I’d be rude or ask them
in the wrong way.”
“It’s almost like ‘Ooooh you don’t go there…’. It’s almost
like there’s an invisible barrier between.”
“I was thinking ‘I don’t want to say this in case it’s
wrong’, ‘I don’t want to make it worse’.”
Is it my role?
“If we do think there’s a family in conflict we would
refer it on.”
“It’s more about the child than the parents. That’s
where I see myself at the moment.”
“I’ve had families where it worked to get both sides
and say what can we agree on and what can we work on, but again, we’re
not counsellors.”
Anne Gibson, Hartlepool Carers
Jan Hollis, Hartlepool Carers
Susan Harrison, Hartlepool Carers
Lisa Hornby, Head of Y9 and Parental Engagement
Lead, St Hild’s School
Katie Hering, Early Help Family Support Worker,
Hartlepool Borough Council
Lisa Hornby, Head of Y9
and Parental Engagement
Lead, St Hild’s School
Nikki Clark, Head of
Early Help,
Hartlepool Borough
Council
Brenda Harrison,
Chair of the Children’s
Strategic Partnership